


My Church Offers No Absolutes

by alienor_woods



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 01:43:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3100394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienor_woods/pseuds/alienor_woods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tastes like moonshine and roasted pumpkin—sharp and sweet and new on her tongue. [ Raven x Murphy, background Bellarke ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Church Offers No Absolutes

**Author's Note:**

> [Title from "Take Me to Church" by Hozier]

* * *

 

Clarke and Bellamy walk the fence perimeter, taking a long, slow circuit along the seam where Camp Jaha’s firelight blends into the darkness beyond. Heads bent together, they keep in step as easily as breathing. Raven watches their shoulders bump into each other now and again from where she leans against the signal tower, hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets.

 

“Yikes.” Murphy sidles into her periphery and sinks his teeth into an apple. “Couples. Well, I guess it’s for the best—repopulating the planet and all. Do you think they cuddle after they fuck?”

 

Bellamy and Clarke steer out of sight. Raven’s eyes slide back to the tree line. Well, where she thinks the tree line is, based on where she’d been looking since before sunset. It’s far from the Camp Jaha fence. The grounders’ tents had filled the space—

 

Inhale. Exhale.

 

“...wouldn’t have thought so a few months ago, but now he seems like he would want to hold her hand and talk about feelings or some shit.”

 

Raven blinks. Breathes. Murphy leans his shoulder into the corner of her signal tower and spins his apple on its core in his long fingers. His teeth sink into the red skin and creamy flesh beneath and then snap away a fresh bite.

 

“Clarke’s the wild card, though. Like, sometimes, when she’s been on her pacifist princess kick for a while, I think she might be the type to only fuck with the lights out, under the sheets, pure missionary all the way through. Then I remember she roasted those grounders and apparently helped torture Octavia’s native boy—“

 

“Go away, Murphy.” The words take effort, but less effort than walking away herself. She’s saving that for when it gets too cold, and dark enough that she can get through the hallways without talking to a single soul.

 

Murphy shrugs. “Just making conversation is all, Reyes. You wouldn’t know, would you? For a minute there I thought there were some of those Sapphic vibes going between you two.”

 

It’s not the mere idea that makes her turn her head on her stiff neck, but that _Murphy_ had _thought_ about that and probably jacked off to it and _ugh_. He meets her glare steadily with those wide-set eyes of his and carefully laps some juice from his forefinger. With his last comment, it seems a bit crude, but then he pops the clean tip of his thumb between his lips and waggles his brows at her.

 

Raven feels her eyebrow twitch, but then she remembers that she really doesn’t give a shit about what rattles around in Murphy’s twisted version of a brain. She exhales the not-even-half-formed annoyance into the chilly air and turns her head back to its neutral position.

 

“I would ask Finn, but, y’know…” Murphy’s voice trails off, replaced with a mimicked squelching sound while he mimes a stab into the air.

 

Everything sort of—blurs—but she’s moving, hand pulling from her jacket pocket and open palm connecting with Murphy’s cheek with a sharp _crack_ that reverberates up her wrist and elbow. His head snaps to the side, overgrown bangs whipping across his forehead and into his eyes. They stand there for a moment, Raven’s shaky breaths rattling in her ears and redness blooming on Murphy’s skin. The needles in Raven’s palm tell her that her own hand matches.

 

Murphy moves first, rolling his head back to center and brushing his hair from his eyes. “Hit a nerve, I see,” he drawls with a long, slow blink. “It’s been almost two months. That’s like, years in Ark time. You’re gonna have to get over it sooner or later.”

 

He takes another bite of his apple but Raven slaps him again, anyway. It lacks the ardor and speed of the first one, but this time when Murphy brings his head around, there’s blood at the corner of his mouth. He spits the mangled fruit onto the grass and licks the blood away.

 

“Piece of advice, Reyes.” With a shove away from the tower, Murphy rocks onto his feet and takes a step forward; Raven pivots on her boot’s heel to give him her back.

 

“Not interested.” The guard is changing. Fresh and cleaned uniformed men saunter towards the impatient and exhausted men who have been standing watch since lunch.

 

Murphy’s body blocks the frigid wind as he sidles up behind her, nearly pressing his shoulder into her back. “Don’t close your fist. Byrne’ll drag you from your precious circuitry kicking and screaming.”

 

His boots crunch across the frosted ground and fade into the cacophony of night sounds that Raven has become adept at turning into white noise. Twilight has fully faded now; Raven stares into the blackness.

 

Inhale. Exhale.

 

* * *

 

The color returns to her world slowly, bleeding in from the edges like the watercolors that Clarke makes to distract herself from the never-ending needs of the camp. Raven finally laughs at Wick’s terrible jokes and returns Abby’s smiles in the hallways. As if she’d been waiting for the right moment, Clarke slips in through Raven’s bedroom door with two cups and a pint jar of moonshine. It’s better than Monty’s, but only because it’s made by Monty’s dad.

 

With a doctor’s precision, Clarke pours out a finger for each of them. “To Finn.”

 

Raven clinks the rim of her cup against Clarke’s. “Finn.”

 

There are tears by the end of the night, but they’re tears of laughter, brought out by Raven’s recounting of Finn’s surprise tenth birthday party, his disastrous first presentation in school, his complete ineptitude at poker…

 

And so Finn Collins is laid to rest in Raven’s heart.

 

Her headache wakes her up the next morning, but she doesn’t let it stop her from rolling onto her side and nudging Clarke into consciousness.

 

“We’ll need walkie talkies for Mount Weather.”

 

* * *

 

The roll of wire creaks softly as it unspools; Raven takes slow, even backwards steps and watches the wire fall to the ground. Murphy lags behind a few paces and scans their surroundings with his thumb on the safety of his rifle. Other than their boots on the ground and the rhythmic creak of the wire spool, the forest is dead silent.

 

Not that Raven’s complaining -- the silence-on-Mount-Weather requirement is the reason Raven agreed to take Murphy as her guard for her section of the explosives wiring.

 

With about fifty feet of wire remaining on her spool, Raven looks over her shoulder for the best place to assemble, attach, and hide the explosive. A fat oak tree with raised roots looks promising, so Raven shifts her path to bring them towards it—

 

A horn slices through the quiet. Raven and Murphy freeze, eyes locked. He raises a finger; the Grounders had told them that one blast would be an alert for cougars, boars, and the like, two blasts for acid fog.

 

The blast tapers and stops--Raven and Murphy hold their breath--then the horn sounds again. Murphy curses and swings his rifle around to his back. Raven drops her backpack and unzips it to pull out the tent.

 

“The bunker’s just across that creek,” Murphy tells her, pointing at the distant brook gurgling with snowmelt.

 

“It’ll take just a sec to set this up—“

 

“That’s hundred-year-old plastic sheeting and there’s six _inches_ of concrete just over there.” He’s already walking away and she can’t rig up the tent on her own, not with her bum leg.

 

The problem is: she’ll never sprint again. She has to swing her leg from the hip and it’s awkward and part of Raven wants to just drop where she is and let the acid fog take her. Murphy stops at the bank of the creek and turns to stretch out his hand for hers. Three big steps take them across and he hauls her up the other bank, eyes widening as he looks beyond her shoulder. “We gotta hurry.”

 

She sees the hatch at the bottom of the hill right before her foot—her numb foot, of course, it’s always the numb foot—catches on a rock and she pitches forward with her arms outstretched. Her palms meet leafs and rocks, then her cheek—she tastes dirt—twigs snap near her ear as her torso pivots on the point of her shoulder—she tumbles and tumbles in a blur of green and brown and Murphy shouts her name over the thud and crack of her brace meeting a boulder.

 

Then Murphy’s face is double over her, breaking up the branches of the forest canopy. “Can you stand?” His arm slides under her shoulders and helps her sit up. Raven sees the shattered joint of her brace, shakes her head, and groans at the resulting vertigo.

 

“Fuck—“ Murphy hauls her to her good foot, hooks her arm around his neck, and all but carries her to the hatch. By the time she clumsily clambers down the ladder, flips on the overhead light, and hobbles over to the couch, she’s regained her senses and sets to work yanking the straps of her brace free. The hatch clangs shut and Murphy lands on his feet with a heavy thud without so much as a wobble or a need to grab onto the ladder for balance.

 

Raven knows that he doesn’t _know_ , that people with two good legs don’t have to even _think_ about that sort of thing, but the frustration wells up in her throat and snaps when the brace comes away with a rattle. “Great call, Murphy.” She flings the brace across the room, aiming for the bed instead of the wall at the very last moment when she remembers that Wick made it for her in the first place.

 

Murphy flinches when it bounces off the dusty blankets and tumbles to the floor. She waits for him to make excuses, but he stays silent, the muscle in his jaw jumping and knuckles white where he’s got his hands on his hips. Finally, he shoves his fingers through his hair and stalks to the other end of the bunker to poke around on the shelves.

 

Her shoulders sting and she twists her neck to look at the state of the rest of her limbs. The top of her sweater is shredded from the fall and the skin underneath looks red and angry. _Of course_. Raven wrenches the sweater over her head and her tank nearly comes off with it, so she has to struggle with the fabric to keep everything where it’s supposed to be. When she emerges from her tangle of shirts, Murphy has returned from the shelves with a backpack. Hurriedly, he pulls his eyes from the scars over her spine and above her hip and busies himself with opening the pack on the bed.

 

“Does it still hurt?” he asks, his voice low even in the quiet of the bunker with its six inches of concrete.

 

The sweater balls in her fists and bounces against the far armrest of the couch when she pitches it away from her. “I don’t want to talk about it and I sure as hell don’t want to talk about it with _you_.”

 

The muscle in his jaw jumps again and he gives a tight nod. He picks up her brace and folds it at what’s left of the knee joint to fit it into the pack. Straightening out the blanket, he picks up a few pieces that he finds among the folds. Within a few minutes, he’s carefully packed the brace into the pack and set it down by the ladder. Raven pins him with a heavy gaze as he walks back, drops down beside her on the couch, and pulls a half-whittled hunk of wood and a knife from his jacket pocket.

 

He’s cut his hair but it still hangs across his eyes when he sets his elbows on his knees and hangs his head down to focus on whatever variation of a spear he’s surely started working on. Raven just wants to forget about her shit leg and their missing friends and the skin boiling fog above them for five whole minutes, so she closes her eyes, drops her head back, and lets the sound of Murphy’s knife stripping the bark from the stick lull her into a doze

 

When the fog clears, Murphy carries her on his back the five miles back to camp without complaint.

 

* * *

They leave Raven behind for the Mount Weather assault.

 

It makes sense, it _does_ , but it still stings. She pushes that aside to remember that some of them could die out there, so she makes sure to hug them all goodbye and send them away with a wave. Then she goes up to the shop, turns the radio to their walkie-talkie frequency and starts to work her way through the damaged electronics that have been piling up since she started churning out supplies for the Mount Weather operation.

 

The sound of soldering and the smell of melting metal fill every corner of her consciousness, crowding out every hint of her worry and doubts. She was the best mechanic on the Ark, and who cares if she’s the only mechanic left? She’s still the best, and as long as she keeps all of her fingers, she’ll keep that title until she’s old and gray.

 

Murphy crutches through the door at lunchtime, favoring his right leg. The gash across his thigh from a tussle with some of the Ark guards goes down into the muscle; Abby had stuck patched him up with twenty stitches and a week of bed rest. No Mount Weather for Murphy, either.

 

“What do you want?” Raven asks, not looking up from the headset she was re-wiring.

 

The clutter of the room served as a challenge, but he makes his way around the table and drops a small sack on the table. “Lunch delivery.”

 

“Already?” She flips up her visor and unties the bag, poking through the apple and pear, the handful of nuts, and the hunk of bread. “Slim pickings.”

 

“They sent most of it with the crusaders,” Murphy tells her, gingerly lowering himself onto a stool and leaning the crutches against the table. “In case they get lost in the woods or whatever. I told Bellamy that they’d better raid those bunker kitchens. Who knows what they’ve been storing there.”

 

Raven grimaces. “If it’s survived inside for 100 years, I probably don’t want to eat it.”

 

“You do remember that we were living in space, right?”

 

“I never said the food was good up there, either.”

 

The radios begin to crackle as the walkie talkies start to pass out of range. Raven pauses in her wire stripping and listens to Clarke and Lexa confirm their positions, and Kane ask for reinforcements on his left flank, and Bellamy give a hail for the first Mount Weather sign, and then their voices turn into static. Raven leans over and turns the volume down so that it turns to a hum of white noise. “Just waiting, now.”

 

She expects Murphy to leave, his delivery boy duties over, but he leans back into the edge of the table instead and pulls another hunk of wood out of his pants pocket.

 

“What are you even doing with that? Building up your own arsenal?”

 

Murphy throws her a smirk and a wink. “Can’t tell you, Reyes. It would ruin the surprise.”

 

Raven gestures to the floor below his feet with her screwdriver. “You clean your own mess up,” she tells him, matter-of-fact, and returns to her work.

 

* * *

 

(It’s an owl.

 

The Arkers bring the 47 through the gates of Camp Jaha past midnight, and Raven is there to wrap a dirty and bloody Clarke up in a hug. If she’d lost Clarke, too—

 

Raven doesn’t let herself go down that rabbit hole. Instead she heads to her room when Bellamy comes over and he and Clarke fall into their own little world that everyone but them know exists.

 

And there it is – a creamy little owl perched on the edge of her table, small enough to fit in her palm. She turns it over, looking for his initials, but sees her own name carved into the base of the tail instead: “Raven R.”

 

He might have been the one to make it, but it belonged to her.)

 

* * *

 

The Arkers haven’t been back a week when they celebrate the New Year with an open still and no curfew. Byrne didn’t seem happy at _all_ with those decisions, but even Jaha told her to basically stick a sock in it and suck it up. So now, the hooch flows freely, even for the kids. Things like drinking ages tend to be thrown out the window on holidays and during apocalyptic events, after all.

 

Clarke and Raven giggle their way through three or four glasses (small glasses, of course. You don’t just fill a glass full of moonshine, _duh_ ) and wander their way in and around and between the bonfires with linked arms. Octavia even leaves Lincoln’s side to walk with them, her arm linked with Clarke’s free arm. Whenever Clarke wants a pull of her drink, she has to pull Raven’s arm with her, sparking a whole other round of laughs.

 

“Your walkie talkies saved us,” she tells Raven, the seriousness of her tone belied by how her hand pats over Raven’s hair and twirls in her ponytail. “Seriously. _Saved_ us. I should make you some sort of trophy or something but you’re the welder…maybe you should make yourself a trophy!”

 

“I should, shouldn’t I?” Raven looks back at the stars, hazed over in places by the smoke. “Maybe a big walkie talkie. And it’s the Raven Reyes Mount Weather Award.”

 

“Yes. Do it.” Clarke nods, all seriousness. “We should have a ceremony and present it to you.”

 

Raven giggles. “But then I would have to present it to myself! Because I made it.”

 

As they round one of the bonfires, they nearly trip over Bellamy and Murphy’s outstretched legs. The guys are leaning back on their elbows, and Murphy balances his cup of hooch on his knee. “What are you girls laughing about?” he drawls, dragging his eyes over them from boots to crowns.

 

“None of your business,” Clarke shoots back, just as Raven says, “My awesomeness.”

 

Murphy chuckles and rolls to his feet. “So Reyes’ awesomeness is none of my business?”

 

He gives Clarke a slow blink with those clear blue eyes of his, full mouth quirked to the side, and Raven blurts out, “Only because you can’t _handle_ my awesomeness, John Murphy.”

 

His eyes flick over to hers, dark and heavy with something other than anger and Raven’s stomach gives a flip even as Bellamy laughs and hops up to wrap the girls into one big hug. “You’re all awesome,” he tells them, and “You’re drunk,” Octavia tells him.

 

“Not really!” Bellamy defends himself, sloshing his drink over his hand as he jerks it to his heart, but Murphy catches Raven’s eye again and nods his head to confirm Octavia’s assessment.

 

Clarke latches onto Bellamy’s elbow and tugs him away from the fire. “C’mon, Bell. Let’s get you some water.”

 

“But it’s almost midnight, Clarke,” Bellamy says ( _whines_ ), and at that, Octavia breaks away from her brother and Clarke. She waggles her brows at Raven, miming a kiss at Clarke and Bellamy’s backs, and peels away, no doubt to find Lincoln.

 

The bonfire crackles at Raven’s left, and she closes her eyes to revel in its warmth in the frigid night air. Spring would be here soon, and they wouldn’t have need to huddle near fires at night for their warmth.

 

“So – first Spacewalker, now Bellamy,” Murphy says, breaking the silence. He’s come up beside her and takes a long drag from his cup. Off in the distance, Bellamy has pulled Clarke to a stop, and they can only see him pull her into the shadows because they’d been watching them before they slipped off into the dark. “Must suck to have both your men go after the Princess after they think they’ve had their fill of you.”

 

And just like that, Murphy kills her buzz. Still, it’s so out of left field yet so _him_ that Raven can’t help but laugh. “You’re an asshole,” she informs him, like it’s groundbreaking news.

 

“I’ve never claimed otherwise.” People are looking at their watches and counting down now; Muphy sidles closer, and Raven can’t believe that she’s going to be kissing _Murphy_ of all people at midnight. “The difference between me and them, though,” he says, almost thoughtfully, swirling his drink in his cup, “is that I have no interest whatsoever in Clarke Griffin.”

 

The words connect in her mind, then their meaning, and then people are screaming in joy at the turn of the old year into the new one, and Murphy steps closer and cups her neck with his free hand, gently tugs her forward.

 

He tastes like moonshine and roasted pumpkin—sharp and sweet and new on her tongue.

 

* * *

 

The official celebration isn’t until the grounders can round up their people and bring them down from the mountains. By the time the grounders have set up their tents, Camp Jaha seems like it has sextupled in size. The last time there were this many grounders, they’d come for Finn’s blood, but the memory doesn’t cause Raven to pause for a ragged breath like it used to.

 

In addition to the 47, the rescue team had saved the grounders slated for draining. For that one act, it seems like all the Sky People’s sins had been erased. While Indra’s anger towards them has only fractionally eased, Octavia swears that Lexa is openly flirting with Kane in traditional grounder style.

 

(Raven wonders how “traditional” grounders could be, with only a hundred years of history on earth after World War III. But no one has asked her, so she’ll keep her thoughts to herself.)

 

New Year’s had only been a week ago, but no one can really refuse another party, though the Greens warn that the whole stock of hooch will likely be completely gone by the end of the night. Clarke relayed this to Lexa, who produced casks of hard cider seemingly out of nowhere to offset any lapse of alcohol. Though Raven would _never_ admit it to Monty, she might actually prefer the cider—it’s sweet and a touch bubbly and just _different_ after months of the same alcohol time and again without change.

 

She’s come straight from the shop, where she’s been working on a new project that would link the grounders’ camps to Camp Jaha in a sort of closed-loop radio feed, and she wanders the grounds on her own, listening to the conversations in snatches as they arise around her. Across camp, she sees Wick lean in to whisper in a grounder girl’s ear, and Raven lets out a long-beleaguered sigh. Yet another woman to break his heart and leave him moaning and just about useless, engineeringly-speaking, for weeks on end.

 

A shadow falls across her path; a grounder warrior has stopped in front of her and peers down his nose at her. “What is that?” he asks, pointing at her leg brace.

 

“A brace for my leg.” Raven goes to push past him, but he follows her.

 

“Your medic should have ended your suffering,” he tells her, as though this were a grand insight into her life.

 

Raven looks down into her cup. She needs more booze. Most people at least get her name before prying into her medical history. “Well, luckily for me, your medic wasn’t here and _my_ medic was.”

 

The grounder warrior continues to trail in her wake, oblivious to her curt demeanor either by choice or by alcohol. He babbles on about her uselessness as a warrior now, and how can she possibly hope to track prey with that limp, and Raven looks about for someone to use as an escape. Clarke was preferable, of course, but she would even take Jasper or Monty at this point.

 

She rounds a corner and sees Murphy lounging against a support beam, watching the game of stickball taking place in the clearing. He raises his brow as she walks right up to him and wraps her arm around his waist.

 

“Hey, babe!” she chirps, pressing a kiss to the corner of his jaw. If she’d had the time, she might have taken it to analyze the exact way that he shudders against her, but the grounder and his friends are behind her, and Murphy, to his credit, seems to pick up what she’s putting down.

 

He slings his arm around her shoulders and gives the grounders a once over. “New friends?” Murphy asks, taking a pull of his drink. She smells moonshine and apples, and thinks that he must have mixed the two together. _Smart_ , if she was being honest. He’s got his jacket zipped up against the cold, and a scarf tucked in around his neck.

 

“Nah, I just ran into them.” She keeps her voice purposefully light, though she digs her fingers into the flesh of his far hip. “Had lots of opinions about my leg, of course,” but by now, the grounder has been raked over by Murphy’s half-lidded eyes and found something there to be wary of. He backs away, muttering his goodbyes, and fades into the crowd.

 

Murphy slides his gaze to her face. “Alright, Reyes?” She’s pulled up against his body, and if she leaned her face forward, it would be buried in his neck.

 

Raven clenches her teeth and gives in for one brief, _brief,_ moment, presses her face into his throat. He might have shot her in the back, but he also wiped blood from her face and tried to save Finn even when she tried to give him to the grounders in Finn’s place. Murphy’s arm tightens across her shoulders, probably as close to a hug as he would ever offer. “I’m sick of assholes thinking I’m just my leg,” she mutters, thinking that maybe he didn’t hear her over the drums and mayhem around them. “Or that I’m expendable because of it.”

 

“You want me to kill him?” Murphy speaks low in her ear. Raven turns her head up towards him and his nose brushes her cheekbone. He leans into the touch instead of pulling away; Raven feels his eyelashes brush against her temple when he blinks. “I can make it look like an accident.”

 

His voice is steady and sure; he would do it, she knows. If she nodded, he would. Heat flares between her legs and before she overthinks it, she fists his shirt in her fist and jerks his mouth to hers. Murphy grunts a bit and tightens his arm around her shoulder, leans backwards to keep them upright. His free hand slides over her jaw and behind her head to cradle her skull. She thinks he might pull away after a brief moment, like he did on New Year’s, but no—he opens his mouth against hers and slides his tongue into her mouth; she welcomes him with the hint of her teeth against his lower lip and the sneak of her free arm under his jacket. He’s all muscle, rises and valleys under her hand, and he huffs when she presses her fingers into the bare space between his shirt and his pants.

 

“Raven!”

 

She jerks away at Clarke’s voice, wipes her mouth from Murphy’s (eager) kisses. His arm falls from around her shoulders easily enough, but Clarke stares at the two of them like she’s not sure what she’s even _seen_ in the first place.

 

After Murphy splits (he knows Clarke won’t leave before he does, and Clarke Griffin is one of the few people Murphy doesn’t dare take on anymore.), Clarke rests her hand on Raven’s arm. “He shot you, Raven.”

 

Raven closes her eyes. Behind her eyelids, she watches herself press live wires into Lincoln’s skin and become frustrated when the voltage isn’t high enough for the grounder to spill the secret of the poison’s antidote. “I know.” 

 

* * *

 

 

When it happens (and they knew it would) it’s kicked off by nothing in particular, really.

 

She’s reading a circuitry manual in her bed after bathing, brace off and tucked under her bed. It drags on her after a full day of use, and she hopes that one day her lower back won’t ache by dinner time from accounting for the mis-matched weight of her legs. There’s a knock at her door and he calls out her name from the other side.

 

Without her brace, she has to use the wall for extra support, but the walk isn’t long at all. “What is it?” Raven asks, opening the door wider so that he can come in.

 

He shrugs and slips by her. “I just left Bellamy’s room and wondered if you were still up.”

 

The door closes with a soft click under Raven’s hand. He’s been doing this almost daily—coming to the shop and pestering her while she works, walking her back to her room after dinner, you get the idea. When no one is in the halls, she tugs him forward by his jacket lapels and lets him back her into the wall, mouths hot and desperate against each other. He’s never asked to come in, though.

 

Which is why she’s a bit embarrassed when she turns around (slowly, hand on the back of her desk chair for balance) and sees him looking at the little owl he made for her. She keeps it on a shelf above her bed, next to Finn’s necklace and whatever odd project she might be working on before bed. She waits for him to make a snarky comment, but he only peers at it for a beat longer before turning on his heel and tilting his head. “Your hair…”

 

She touches the ends, they’re still a bit damp. “I just showered. Another great perk of the brace. I would have been stuck with baths forever if I’d never put it on—“

 

In two strides, he’s across the room, cupping her face and slanting his mouth across hers. A little grunt escapes her and she clutches his arms to keep her balance. He mutters something against her lips but she can’t quite hear it over the pounding of her blood in her ears, but it sounds like—

 

“Sorry,” she gasps as she stumbles back into her dresser, but Murphy shakes his head and moves with her, smooths his palms over her shoulders while he laps at her jaw. He peels away her hoodie, leaving her in a tank top, cups a breast in his palm. She’s not wearing a bra after her shower, and the sweet pressure of his hand pushes a sigh from her chest. His fingers pluck at the hem of her tank while his mouth nibbles on her throat, giving her a chance to bat his hands away. She doesn’t though, just grabs the hair at the nape of his neck and guides his lips back to hers until she has to raise her arms up for her tank to be tugged off.

 

Then his hands run from her collarbones to her hipbones and back up and around to hold her against his chest. Raven wraps her arms around Murphy’s neck and shivers at the rasp of her nipples against his canvas jacket. It feels good, _so_ good, but she still pushes him away after a moment to yank down the zipper of his jacket. “Off.” Nothing feels as good as skin on skin.

 

Murphy keeps his mouth on hers while he fumbles with the snap and zip of her cargo pants, then drops into a squat to pull them and her underwear down her legs. He gets them off her good leg without a problem, but she has to help him with her numb leg, lifting it by the knee so he can slide the fabric over her socked foot. She cards her fingers through his hair, expecting him to come back up, but he leans in and kisses the inside of her knee instead, gently runs his fingertips along the outer edge of her patela.

 

Raven’s eyes burn. She blinks and swallows against the thickness in her throat. “I can’t feel that.”

 

He sighs and glides his hands up to grasp her thighs. “I know.” Still, his lips trace a slow and steady path up the line of her thigh until he’s lapping at the point of her hipbone. “Can you feel that?” he asks with a smirk, and Raven gives his hair a sharp tug. Murphy chuckles against her hip and moves to nip the skin just under her navel. “That?”

 

“Not so sharp,” Raven breathes, shifting her shoulders against the dresser. He mumbles an apology against her belly, but the hurt is already fading to the back of her mind he’s drifting his knuckles up the inside of her good thigh and his breath is hot against her curls—

 

\--his tongue, too, firm and steady on her clit, even when Raven’s hips buck because it’s been _so_ long since a guy (Bellamy) has gone down on her. Finn had known her body almost as well as Raven does, had been able to get her off in five minutes flat. For his part, Bellamy had known she’d come to his tent to forget another guy, so he’d been thorough and inventive. Murphy’s holding up well to the competition so far, sending his tongue curling past her clit and into the folds beyond, laughing openly when Raven’s head lolls back against the dresser’s surface with a thud.

 

Her knee starts to shake, and Raven feels her center of gravity start to go off kilter without two good legs to support her. “I can’t—I can’t stay up,” she huffs out, flinging an arm around to press against the side of the dresser.

 

Murphy grunts and surges to his feet, catches Raven by the backs of her thighs and hoists her up and off the ground. His cock presses into her inner thigh through his cargos; she uses her good leg to squeeze his waist and counterbalance the roll of her hips. “Fuck, Raven.” She tastes her tartness on his lips as he walks them across the room and drops her on the edge of her desk.

 

His hand drifts down her chest, cupping her breast and smoothing over her belly as it goes, and then two long fingers slip between her folds. Raven groans into Murphy’s mouth and grips his arm to feel the muscles underneath flex in time with the curl and slide of his fingers. His other hand cards through her loose hair while he sucks on her lower lip and nuzzles her cheekbone. Then he’s sliding down her body, hooking her knee over his shoulder, and licking into her again.

 

He knows what he’s doing and Raven could cry because she _knew_ he would. You can’t have a mouth like his and not know what to do with it. She braces herself on her palm and runs her fingers through his hair, unable to decide on gripping it or petting it. His tongue and fingers are insistent in their drive towards her orgasm, and sooner rather than later she feels herself drift into the familiar, slowly-cresting wave. She cries out his name and tells him to not stop—he hums against her, laves the broad flat of his tongue over her clit, and rolls his eyes up to catch her watching him work between her legs. The sight of his hair falling into his eyes while his mouth is buried against her cunt sends Raven over the edge, her back and neck arching hard with her release.

 

He pulls his head away and lets his fingers coast her down while he kisses her thighs, and then his way back up her body. Raven holds his mouth to hers with a hand cupped around the back of his neck and hooks her ankle around the back of his knee. Even as he gentles his kisses against her mouth, she can feel how hard he is. Humming with her own satisfied pleasure, she passes her knuckles over the front of his pants and he exhales heavily through his nose.

 

“Let me,” she murmurs, and works his pants open and down low on his hips. With care to not snag him, Raven eases his cock out from his boxers and gives it a stroke from base to tip. His eyelids flutter and he moans a bit in his throat as she runs her fingers along the vein and around the head, getting the lay of the land. “We can go to the bed—“ she starts, since kneeling blowjobs aren’t an option until she fits a cap onto the front of her brace, but Murphy shakes his head and rubs her good thigh with his palm.

 

“This is good,” he says, voice thick. She licks her palm and strokes him with a firm fist, reveling in the curse he whispers against her temple. His hands clutch at her shoulders while she gets her rhythm going, sweep down her arms and back up to the sides of her neck when she briefly presses her thumb under the plump head. He kisses her, lets her tug on his lower lip with her teeth when his breath starts stuttering in time with the shudders of his abs.

 

He presses his forehead to her temple and starts muttering. It’s her name, sprinkled liberally with all sorts of expletives, but her name, her name again, then, “fuck—“ and he’s spilling onto a rag Raven’s snatched at the last minute. His cock pulses under the gentle slide of her loose fist and he slaps his palms on the desk beside her hips and rocks his weight into them. Once she throws the rag aside, Raven slides her hands under his arms and welcomes the drop of his head onto her shoulder.

 

His breath evens out against her skin; after a time, she feels his fingers trace over the scar above her hip, where his bullet entered her body before it hit her spine. Without speaking, she catches Murphy’s hand with hers and pulls it away. “Don’t depress a girl right after you get her off,” she murmurs, jostling her shoulder until he lifts his head so she can slip off the desk and limp to her bed.

 

She tosses the manual onto her bedside table and turns down her covers, slipping between them in the nude. Murphy slips his pants back over his hips and makes to button them, but Raven pats the mattress beside her and scoots to the far wall. “C’mon,” she orders with a yawn. “And get the lights.”

 

A secret she’ll take to her grave: John Murphy is a superb big spoon.

**Author's Note:**

> Tl; dr: Murphy is sort-of-maybe-definitely-totally pining after Raven from the beginning and this ship is the HMS: Aggressive Apologetic Cunnilingus for a reason.


End file.
